Reports of non-existent training before been shipped to Iraq continue to circulate, this time from Ft. Bliss, which sonds like it is anything but that.
The soldiers said in interviews, e-mails and official documents that they were sent to war this year with chronic illness, broken guns and trucks with blown transmissions.
The unit’s M-60 machine guns reportedly were in such bad condition when the soldiers deployed in February that one sergeant — in a section of a post-training summary sent to his commanders that was titled “gun maintenance” — wrote: “Perhaps we should throw stones?”
In the summary document obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the sergeant reported that some soldiers had arrived in Iraq without ever having fired some of the weapons they would use in war.
This would be comical, were it not so tragic. In the meantime, “Rumsfeld tells media he feels grief ‘to my core'” but has still yet to apologize for his callous previous refusal to sign death notifications or for mocking troops who asked for better equipment.